Two weeks left before Paulo finally gets here and I have no significant achievement that marks my two-month independence as time well spent. No, really. I spent most of the time online, stanning One Direction and talking to Lui about it. That's 88% of the time and the rest, I'm waiting for someone to bring them up. I have work but one mention of One Direction makes me forget all my pending tasks and I plunge into more stanning (i.e., watching videos of these ridiculously good looking [possibly] homosexuals being adorable). 

I can't even remember most of my weekends, cementing the fact that they were as fleeting as anything else within these past few months. I know there was a lot of magazine hoarding, some of them I never even read. I've neglected movies. I rarely watch anymore. The one-movie-a-day thing didn't really work for me. I'd rather sleep. So there, sleep. Maybe to fast forward the days away until Paulo comes home. Along with the magazines, books, DVDs and clothes that he is currently hoarding.

I think I didn't even gain weight because I still sleep at around 3am. These timezone differences will kill me in a few years. 

You know that feeling when you think you don't have the time to do everything you want to do but suddenly you actually have a lot of time and you end up doing nothing at all. Well, that's what this is. 

This is unlikely, yes. A lanky kid like me wearing a fucking tank top. But hey, my boyfriend (and some people) said I could work it so I think I did. It's also kind of a statement/a "fuck you" to every one who bullied me back in elementary and high school because I was [is] a wee skinny boy. 

Okay, so this isn't really an agenda. I'm just being brave. Yay 2012?

When I was home for the holidays last December it baffled me that I still had a lot of books left at home. Not to mention magazines. I discarded a lot of my old magazines the last time I was home so I sorted out some of my books and came up with this Probably Wont Be Reading These pile



The books in the pile are:

• Future on Fire - Orson Scott Card ed.
• A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. Leguin
• The Damnation Game - Clive Barker
• Still Life With the Woodpecker - Tom Robbins - Sarie 
• Heart-Shaped Box - Joe Hill (I already have a hardcover) Danae
• The Keeper - Sarah Lanagan
• Mars - Ben Bova
• Hyperion - Dan Simmons
• Small Gods - Terry Prachett - Tricia
• Prime Evil - Douglas Winter ed.
• Tangents - Greg Bea Issa M.
• Revelations - Douglas Winter ed.
• The Farthest Shore - Ursula K. Le Guin
• Camp Concentration - Thomas Disch
• Spanish Stories/Cuentos Espanoles - a yellowing, dual language book with Borges, etc. Danae
• Macarthur - Bob Ong
• Crystal Rain - Tobias Buckell
• Indigo - Graham Joyce
• The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
• The Hacker Crackdown - Bruce Sterling
• Four Films of Woody Allen - Annie Hall, Manhattan + 2 others Ali

These books are quite old, mostly bargain bin finds and I'm letting most of them go except for the italicized ones because I'm on the fence about them for several reasons (sentimental reasons, a percentage of interest, etc.). If you want to adopt some of these kids, do let me know. 

Paulo on a bright new year morning. I can't even begin to describe how amazing it is waking up next to him. 

It's hard not to mention the rollercoaster that was 2011 when talking about the awesome promise of 2012. Six days in and here I am, happily unsingle (teehee) and surprisingly content about other things. I guess this is one of the effects of starting a new relationship. There's this unexplainable calm that comes over you and you no longer care about the mundane things that have previously bothered you. Sure there's a lot of things that are not going so well in my life right now but I have Paulo. And my books, my long queue of movies, my friends, sunshine, windy days and Sunday afternoons! 

I may have overdone the last three but fuck that shit, okay?

I celebrated the new year with Paulo in Olongapo, with my family of course. I told them Paulo's my roommate and he's spending the new year with us because he has no one to celebrate it with (half true!). I think they know there's something going on between us, especially my mom. I plan to tell them this year. I'm both excited and scared thinking about it. Mostly scared. Oh god. 

So here's 2012. People are already jumping around, raving on how bright the new year looks, mainly because of the indie bands that are slated to play here (Toro Y Moi, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Death Cab for Cutie and Toe all in the first three months of the year. Is Manila the new Brooklyn now? Bah. Hardly) or because of the new prospects that they're all eyeing on: a new job, a new home, or new relationships.

It's amazing how we fare at new beginnings, finding the promise of a new lease in life an opportunity to do better. We go up and about and no matter how much we get beaten down, we're still hopeful. So yeah, the better part of 2011 sucked eggs but here's to new beginnings!*

*I realized that this sounds terribly gay and not just because it's the title of Stephen Gately's debut album.

I'd like to think I am! 

Yes? 

EDIT: This is a seriously pointless post. I just like the fact that my full (not really) name rhymes with the Peanuts Broadway musical and it's Christmas so I'll probably watch the Peanuts Christmas movie just like what I've been doing for the past three years. 

I haven't been home in two months and it sucks because I'm going home on the 24th and I badly want to bring Paulo along and make him the first guy I'll ever take home for the holidays but I have to return to Manila on the 25th because I have work on the 26th but I guess I can skip work but I wont since I'm on leave already for tomorrow's The Grim Repat (I love you, Mara Coson) and Ang Bandang Shirley shoot. I've always wanted to be in a music video, a Shirley music video most of all. I've been in love with this band since I was in college and it's amazing I'm friends with some of them already (forgive me for this fanboying and embarrassing moment. I can't help it! AAAAAAAAAA)!

I love my friends. So much. 

More on my love affair with Shirley when I get to it!

It's weird that I usually relate to female writers. Jessica Zafra's Twisted 6 was the reason I started really writing (as opposed to the writing I did when I read Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings). I rooted for Kate Winslet's Rose in Titanic because I was a hopeless romantic who wanted my own Jack. Celine Dion kind of became an early hero for me (all those nights singing along to 'I Love You'). One of my early favorite books was Alison Pearson's I Don't Know How She Does It, which is now a badly reviewed movie starring Sarah Jessica Parker. And at some point, I wanted to be Carrie Bradshaw just because she has a [popular] column and she lives in New York (until now, people tell me I'm Carrie because I "write" for a living but I'm actually more of a Samantha because I work in PR and I'm a whore). 

I remember besixdouze pushing me to read Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary almost three months ago. I actually considered reading it, feeling that I can relate to the life of a thirty-something single British woman with weight issues and her crusades of being a Modern Woman. It'll be all so dandy if it wasn't for the fact that I have a dick and no matter how much you dispute it, I am running mostly in testosterone.   I may have a lot of feelings, most of them conflicting, but I'd like to believe I still have a fair amount of testosterone to tide me over into the "manly" side of gayness. Not that there's anything wrong with being effeminate, really. I'm just lucky that I ain't because my parents would probably disown me and talk behind my back like they do with my effeminate cousin (who probably has a stock of face powder in his bag 100% of the time).

More testosterone points:

• I am a slob
• I have no kitchen/cooking skillz
• I don't go to church

But I am not a douchebag. I constantly turn my life into a Lifetime drama or a Bravo series. So yes, I'm most definitely gay.